This invention relates generally to data transmission by television (TV) broadcast, and more particularly the invention relates to a remote link adapter for use in receiving broadcast data.
At the present time there is no cost effective method of delivering at high-speed packets of digital information to remote locations like homes and mobile vehicles. As used herein, digital information are packets that may contain multimedia data (sound, pictures, text, graphics, video) or executable computer code in addition to addressing status and protocol data. The existing telephone circuits, cellular systems and radio systems are just too slow to be practical and useful in an ever increasing number of digital multimedia applications including graphics, imaging, animation or remote windows. High-speed leased telephone lines and/or high-speed broadband switched digital service, offered by the telephone companies, are too expensive or not yet available to any average user (consumer) or potential user and do not address the needs of mobile users. In addition, all other existing forms of digital transmission techniques to the remote location (also known as the last mile) within any particular metropolitan area are too expensive and impractical to be useful at the present time. Most of these existing forms of high-speed digital transmission to the remote location are well known in the prior art but none of them attempt to use a low-cost, high-speed hybrid transmission scheme as described herein.
There are some existing forms of encoding digital information into the vertical blanking intervals (VBI) of a standard NTSC baseband TV signal, but again, these techniques provide severe difficulties with synchronization and the reception of digital information when it is delivered in the form of variable length data packets. These difficulties translate into higher costs at the receiving site, making those techniques also impractical when used to broadcast high-speed (greater then 10 Mbps) digital information in the form of variable length packets (also referred to herein as "addressable broadcasting" digital services) at very low cost.
This present invention relates to a very cost effective method of delivering high-speed (e.g., 10 Mega bits per second, Mbps, or higher) digital information in the form of packets to any remote location such as a home, school, office or mobile vehicle using standard TV practices and components and as part of a very comprehensive hybrid transmission system. More particularly, the invention provides a device for receiving broadcast data, transmitting the data to the end user, and communicating as necessary with the information provider.